Talking Schrute Bucks: A Town In Italy Is Printing Its Own Money

"We decided to mint money to make sure the local economy could withstand the impact of the situation," Fratangelo explained.

"Ducati" Banknotes are distributed to the residents in accordance with their economic needs. They have already spent thousands of Ducati at their local shops. Every two weeks, the shops return the Ducati to the town council and get the corresponding amount in euros.

I mean that's a Schrute Buck. I know that the founder, owner, and operator of DDTG has joked about the Schrute Buck lately, as he is very confused with how the stock market continues to go up as the terrible news continues to roll in, but this truly is a real-life version of the Schrute Buck. Printed at the local FedEx office. The world is in some sort of global recession, and this town just decided to print their own money.

Are there no rules to society anymore? One dude eats a bat and the entire world just turns into a free-for-all? Because the humanity I know, the humanity I studied in AP WORLD HISTORY, has a very simple economic system. Each country or group of countries has their own currency (money, for you that took just regular econ in high school). Some people have a lot of it (rich), and some people don't have much of it at all (poor). But the good thing about currency, is no matter what your situation is, you can acquire more through improving your skills, improving your education, or simply working really hard at something no one else wants to do.

Or apparently you can just buy an ink cartridge and press print. The old get rich quick schemes used to be to join a pyramid scheme like Herbalife or Arbonne. The new way is to just create your own form of money and assign it a real cash value. And before someone asks what the ratio of Stanley Nickels is to Schrute Bucks, here's the conversion rate of the "Ducati"...

"Five "Ducati" are worth €5, 20 of them are worth €20. That's to avoid confusion, especially for the elderly," Fratangelo said.

My mind is literally blown. How can you just print something off, hand it out, and assign it the exact same cash value of the euro? Mr. Fratangelo, I need you to explain something to my little pea-sized brain. If the money you made up is worth exactly the same as the euro, and you're allowing them to trade in the fake money for the euros every two weeks, why don't you just hand out the euros.....?

I've thought about this for the last 15 minutes trying to come up with an answer, just so one of you braniacs in the comments section can't chirp at me, but I got nothing. If you have the euros on hand to repay people who recieve Ducati as payment, why not just give everyone the euros in the first place?